My Room

The desk is old but it feels new, covered in that shiny, smooth, new layer that brings furniture back to life. The lights are dim, but from some obscure place out of my vision a candle burns bright, casting its flickering warmth over the desk in front of me. I can hear the rain, pitter and patter against the small windows placed deep into the walls around me.

There is not much of anything on the desk, but it feels full, a stack of papers, a picture cozied up next to a screen, and a pile of my favorite pens. A pack of cigarettes, half full, sit to my right as a bottle of Mexican beer mingles amongst the papers to my left. A few screws and a washer sit amongst this accompanied by a small knife, one I made many years ago, a piece of steel, some giraffe bone, and a few brass pins, they make up one of my most prized possessions.

Drawers sit into the desk to both sides, filled with a life, great tales of triumph sit next to pages of hardship and heartbreak. There is a page in there, one that would fill a man’s heart with grief if he were to gaze upon it. Sometimes I slide that page out, it’s between the day I wrangled my childhood cat out of my grandparent’s sunroom when I was five, and another page containing my vast knowledge of old cars. There is no system to how these pages were dumped into these drawers.

The walls are covered in posters and pictures, one of me and my father while the next over an old Godsmack poster, followed by a picture of a Porsche next to one of six marines raising a flag on a pile of war torn rubble. All hung upon walls of thin lumber, warm in it’s touch, sturdy in its long life. My favorite of these are of course the ones of family, the ones with my exes, the ones missing a face, they carry the weight ones words cannot express in their cold warmth.

Sometimes I wish this room was larger, full of all the things I love, full of life and light. I wish there was another in this room, one that could go through these stacks of paper that now surround me, these cabinets so packed full, one that could share this with me. There are days like today, this room is small and bare, not spot of dust, simple and calm.

The small room is not warm or comfortable, I need to push the wall out, to make more room. Maybe then I will have room for another, a furnace to keep me warm, a blanket over my shoulders.

There's a rug in my room, it’s dark and flat, the color of an angry sky, one without a crease or crimp, a rolling smear of dark overhead. My chair catches on it occasionally, when I stand to do my tasks, the ones that do not require me in this chair. Work and chores, the errands that need running, the simple tasks, no I do not need to be at my desk for that. The desk I sit at is late at night, when it’s quiet and dark, when there is nobody to talk to, I sit here.

It is late now and the pen moves slow and sluggish across the pages in front of me, scraping across the heavy paper, an orchestra to the living of one’s life. This page will be deposited into the files soon, as the sun is down and my eyes grow heavy. I often wonder if dreams swim amongst those pages, tucked away in a place hard to find, one needs to look for.